How to Raise an Adult – book summary
Break Free of the Overparenting Trap and Prepare Your Kid for Success
Julie Lythcott-Haims
Bluebird; Main Market edition (10 Sept. 2015)
About the author:
Julie Lythcott-Haims served as Dean of Freshmen and Undergraduate Advising for more than a decade at Stanford University, where she received the Dinkelspiel Award for her contributions to the undergraduate experience. A mother of two teenagers, she has spoken and written widely on the phenomenon of helicopter parenting. Her work has appeared on TEDx talks, in Forbes and the Chicago Tribune.
About the book:
In How to Raise an Adult, Julie Lythcott-Haims draws on research, conversations with admissions officers, educators, and employers, and on her own insights as a mother and as a student dean to highlight how overparenting harms children, their stressed-out parents, and society at large. While empathizing with the parental hopes and, especially, fears that lead to overhelping, Lythcott-Haims offers practical alternative strategies that underline the importance of allowing children to make their own mistakes and develop resilience, resourcefulness, and inner determination necessary for success. A great read for parents who want the best for their children.
Key insights:
“This is a book about parents who are overinvolved in the lives of their kids. It looks at the love and fear of our overinvolvement. It looks at the harm we cause when we do too much. And it looks at how we might achieve better long-term ends – and help our kids achieve even greater success – by parenting differently.”
As parents, we want the best for our kids – most of all, we want them to be happy and have a successful and fulfilled life. And of course, we want to be the best parents for them…what, in fact, is a good thing. But, as often it happens in life, too much of a good thing can be bad.
Julie shares an important observation – there is a big tendency for “helicopter parenting” now. Parents get overprotective and overinvolved in their kids’ lives until adulthood, which has loads of negative long-term consequences on children as well as on their own lives.
The book is packed with stories about overparenting and “checklisted” childhood (sometimes painfully funny) and gives us some practical tips on how to parent differently and why. It is very much US-oriented (loads of stories about Ivy Colleges race), but parents from around the world can significantly benefit from this book.
Below are our favourite big ideas from the book.
Overprotective parenting culture – keeping kids safe and sound
“If we prevent our children from learning how to navigate the world beyond our front yard, it will only come back to haunt them later on when they feel frightened, bewildered, lost, or confused out on the streets.”
Most of us are raising children differently than our parents raised us. We have greater access to technology (mobile phones, GPS tracking, social media, etc.) and have a greater awareness of what MIGHT happen to our kids. That makes us more neurotic – we are scared that if we let our child play outside by himself, a stranger could kidnap him, he may fell off and break a leg, other kids can harm him or take his toys, etc. So we keep following our precious children at the playgrounds, drive them to school, get involved in any type of conflict they face and try to protect them and their feelings as much as we can.
Apparently, that’s not the best way to go:
“We seem interested in preparing our kids to live within a one-mile radius from us for the rest of our lives and uninterested in the life skills that only develop from increasing independence.”
As parents, we need to let our fears go and teach our kids how to explore the world safely by themselves. Why? Because in that way, they learn to judge the risk on their own. And that’s how they learn to be confident, independent and responsible.
As parents, our key role is to teach kids life skills instead of overprotecting and trying to do everything for them (e.g. teach them road safety).
Question for you – how much space you give to your child to explore the world?
Helicopter parenting and its consequences
The problem of the majority of parents nowadays is that they want their kids to “have opportunities for challenge, rigour, and growth without their feelings getting hurt”. These helicopter parents think they know better what their kids have to do in life and how.
Of course, helicopter parents have just good intentions – their main goal in mind is that they want their kids to be happy and successful in this highly competitive world. They try to be on top of everything and try to control every possible outcome, as they simply fear that without their involvement, kids cant become as successful.
Helicopter parents have a “checklist” for the children’s childhood in their mind and execute it a moment to moment. They bring a “no mistakes” mentality to their children (and creating a fixed mindset).
When kids follow their parents “checklist”, they get used to the fact that parents will always hold their hand and sort everything out for them. They literally become dependent on their parents in every aspect of their life. If they face a problem, they don’t need to look for solutions as they can just ask their parents for it.
And one of the saddest outcomes is that they often lose the ability to dream and don’t think about what they would like to do with their life. Here comes to mind William Damon – in “The Path to Purpose” (check out the notes), he actually highlights that some parents put too much pressure on their kids regarding their future choices, which later in life results in the midlife crisis and the feeling of emptiness and purposelessness.
Moreover, studies show that children with helicopter parents “were less open to new ideas and actions and more vulnerable, anxious, and self-conscious”, as well as “reported significantly higher level of depression and less satisfaction in life”. Helpless kids with poor mental health – not the best perspective. And that has long-term consequences throughout their adulthood (not easy to fix, by the way).
That also resonates with Sir Ken Robinson: in You, your child and school (check out the notes) he talks about helicopter parenting and refers to Chris Meno, a psychologist at Indiana University:
“When children aren’t given the space to struggle through things on their own, they don’t learn to problem-solve very well. They don’t learn to be confident in their own abilities, and it can affect their self-esteem. The other problem with never having to struggle is that you never experience failure and can develop an overwhelming fear of failure and of disappointing others. Both the low self-confidence and the fear of failure can lead to depression and anxiety.”
That’s exactly the opposite of what we want for our children ☺ And guess what? Helicopter parenting harms parents as well:
“The research found that mothers who adopt an “intensive parenting attitude” are more likely to have negative mental health outcomes. Specifically, mothers “who believe women are the essential parent” had lower life satisfaction, and those who believed that parenting is challenging and requires expert knowledge and skills were more stressed and more depressed than moms “who didn’t think an arsenal of expertise was mandatory.”
So, here is proof that helicopter parenting is simply harmful. And below are few tips from Julie on how to avoid this overparenting trap.
Teach them life skills
“A person hand-held through life – where things are always taken care of them – doesn’t have an opportunity to develop the concept of mastery at the heart of psychology professor Albert Bandura’s theory of “self-efficacy”, which is the belief in your abilities to complete a task, reach a goal, and manage a situation.”
Basic life skills (e.g. keeping track of our belongings, making meals, waking up on time in the morning and so on) are super important for everyone. And this is our responsibility as parents to teach them these skills and prepare them for adulthood.
Of course, that’s often the way to express our love to kids, and we think that we are helping them by taking care of all these household tasks. But guess what happens if we (or other caregivers) do everything for our child? They are not just getting spoiled, but it could lead to a kind of “learned helplessness” – a concept developed by psychology professors Peterson and Seligman that describes how humans shut down when they feel they have no control over situations.
Here is a 4 step strategy for building skills in children:
“- first we do it for you,
– then we do it with you,
– then we watch you do it,
– then you do it completely independently.”
So simple and so useful.
Which skills should you teach? It depends on the age ☺ But check out the list here for more information.
Question for you – which top 3 skills can you start teaching your child this week?
Give them unstructured time
Free play is essential to a child’s healthy development and mental health:
“for healthy psychological development, kids must be involved in activity that is freely chosen, directed by the kids themselves, and undertaken for its own sake, “not consciously pursued to achieve ends that are distinct from the activity itself.”
In fact, play is children’s job. It is their basic need.
The problem is that some children don’t have much space for free play in their life, as they have a really busy schedule packed with extracurricular activities. When they have some free time, parents may decide to jump in and play with them (technically, they direct play). But to experience all the benefits of play, it should be FREE – that means that an adult does not direct things. So few tips here:
- Value free play and embrace it as a developmental necessity for your child (like sleeping and eating);
- Offer materials and equipment that foster imaginative play – e.g. lego, a big carton box (it can be a house, a rocket, a car…and whatever kids think it is)
- Let your kid decide how and what to play – don’t force just your ideas
- Work on creating space between you and your kid (resist the temptation to get involved – that’s one of the hardest things, isn’t it?)
- Create a culture of free outdoor play (remember, like in our childhood?) – cooperate with other parents
- Model play – adults should play too! Cards, board games, sports, dancing…whatever you and your friends fancy ☺
Question for you – how much FREE play your child gets each day?
Teach them how to think
“If we want our kids to be able to think for themselves, we have to be willing to open up a dialogue with them and resist the natural temptation to give an answer, say what we know about a situation, solve the problem, and in other ways shut the dialogue – and their thinking – down.”
Critical thinking is an essential life skill in our highly competitive world. So teach your kids how to use their brains – get involved in a conversation with them, ask questions, let them go through the work of trying out a solution and figuring things out. Talk to your kids about their experiences, ideas and feelings. Don’t just give them answers and solutions for everything.
“Helping someone understand information or make a decision by continuing to ask them questions about it – is a trusted method for helping children figure something out for themselves instead of the teacher (or parent) supplying the information or the answer.”
Chores are essential for preparing kids for hard work
“A kid who does chores has a greater chance of success in life, according to Dr Marilynn “Marty” Rossman, professor emeritus of family education at the University of Minnesota….those who were most successful began doing chores at three or four years of age, whereas those who waited until their teen years to start doing chores were comparatively less successful.”
Julie tells us that there is a strong link between doing chores in childhood and success and work ethics in adulthood. Want your kids to be successful in life – get them involved in chores early.
Real success is not about “believing in yourself” and talking about great plans. It’s actually about being proactive and getting things done (and done well). Chores are a great way to practice this.
So model it, set high expectations, expect them to help, give clear and straightforward instructions, give appropriate thanks and feedback, and make it routine. And see the magic. ☺
We practice “15 minutes for the house” every day when everyone in the family (including a 2-year-old) is involved in chores – works well so far.
Help them build resilience
“The best predictor of success is a sense of resiliency, grit, capacity to fail and get up. If you’re prevented from feeling discomfort or failure, you have no sense of how to handle those things at all.”
Harriet Rosetto
Resilience is our ability to bounce back from adversity, and it is necessary for our happiness and success. Things will go wrong in life, so our kids have to be prepared for it. Here are a few tips on how to build resilience in our children:
- Be present in your children’s life (show them your love and that you are interested in their life)
- Let them take risks and make mistakes (and learn from them – cultivate a Growth mindset)
- Let them make choices and decide how to do things (don’t micromanage)
- Help them grow from experience (engage in conversation about what they’ve learned from a particular experience, set the bar higher and combat perfectionism)
- Built their character – the degree of kindness, generosity, fairness, and willingness to work hard, among other things
- Give specific, authentic (and constructive) feedback – check out Dr Dweck’s ideas on this in her great book “Mindset.”
- And again – model it! Talk about your setbacks and how you overcame them – we are not perfect ☺
Lead by example – reclaim yourself
“Nothing has a stronger influence psychologically on their environment and especially on their children than the unlived life of the parent”
Carl Jung
Often we get so absorbed by parenting that we lose ourselves. Our kids’ life becomes our life. We are exhausted by parenting and don’t have time for ourselves. But this is not the best way to go.
The research shows that our children think of us as their heroes. So make sure you are an excellent example for your kids and that you live your heroic life: discover your passion and purpose, prioritize your health and wellness, make time for your most important relationships. Just live your life!
Actions for you:
- Reflect on your parenting behaviour – are there any signs of overparenting?
- Think about three life skills you can teach your child this week
- Let your kids do chores
Quotes from the book:
